stcynic
Posts by this author
February 20, 2004
I had to chuckle as I read Tim Sandefur's take on how conservatives view the judiciary:
Joe: I would like to do X, which is something that doesnt harm anyone else.
Richard: Yeah, but I dont like you doing X. It just bothers me. Therefore Im going to force you to stop.
Judge Bill: Um, Richard, Im…
February 19, 2004
Jack Balkin of the Yale Law School keeps a terrific blog that I link to and read often. On his blog today, he includes a reposting of a message he sent to a constitutional law listserv concerning Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his concept of originalism. The listserv thread concerned an…
February 19, 2004
Stephen Meyer and John Angus Campbell of the Discovery Institute had an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday concerning the recent flap over evolution in the science curriculum in Georgia. In a way, you have to admire how skillfully the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has…
February 19, 2004
Rusty at New Covenant has posted a reply to me concerning the 9th amendment. He begins with this statement:
I think part of Ed's issue is that he really doesn't understand what I'm saying, or that I'm not communicating it clearly enough... or a little of both. He seems to think that I'm advocating…
February 18, 2004
Paul Starr, editor of The American Prospect, has an interesting opinion article about the gay marriage controversy. He is asking the political (as opposed to legal) question of whether the Massachusetts Supreme Court's ruling may have made it less likely, not more, that there will be equal rights…
February 18, 2004
Jacob Levy of the University of Chicago has weighed in on the question of whether the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in the New Republic. He agrees entirely with the argument I made in my fisking of William Kristol and in my post on Bork and the bizarre framing process of the FMA. That argument…
February 18, 2004
Rusty Lopez has written yet another response to something I've written, but this time on a different subject. This time it's in response to a post I made on gay marriage and the notion of judicial activism. In particular, he is objecting to my arguments concerning the 9th amendment and unenumerated…
February 18, 2004
250 scientists and science educators from the state of Missouri have released a joint statement pointing out the unscientific nature of "Intelligent Design"(ID) and taking a public stand against Missouri House Bill 911. This bill is the most cleverly worded and detailed ID bill yet introduced in…
February 17, 2004
The more I read from conservatives and their arguments against gay marriage, the more I'm convinced that there simply isn't any there there. The latest is from William Kristol, who, along with Joseph Bottum, writes this article in the upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard. The article is almost…
February 17, 2004
Tyler Cowen, of the Volokh Conspiracy, is encouraging everyone to read Will Wilkinson's post on libertarianism and the problem of mythology. Wilkinson likewise encourages us to read the conversation in Reason magazine on the subject between Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett (one of my favorites),…
February 17, 2004
WorldNetDaily is reporting on a new poll, taken by ABC, which says that 60% of Americans believe in a literal 6-day creation and a literal global flood. This is a bit unsettling to the scientifically literate, but it should come as no big shock. The average American is likely to get their…
February 17, 2004
As a brief follow up on the claims made by Rusty Lopez concerning the "testable creation model" that is advocated by Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana of Reasons to Believe, I'd like to quote something on the subject of testability written by Doug Theobald, one of the folks who has contributed so much to the…
February 16, 2004
President Bush has pardoned David McCall, a Plano, Texas businessman who pled guilty to bank fraud in 1996. He and 4 others pled guilty to creating a scheme to hide bad loans from bank regulators during the Savings and Loan scandals of the 80s and 90s.
Prediction #1: the Republicans who howled in…
February 15, 2004
The Washington Post is reporting on the framing of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which has been proposed in Congress to ban gay marriages nationwide, that it is so poorly written that even its proponents don't know what it would prevent and what it would allow. The article begins:
In the spring…
February 15, 2004
On March 24th, the US Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on Elk Grove Unified School District v Newdow, the pledge of allegiance case. The 9th circuit court of appeals ruled against the school district in 2003 and the school district appealed to the Supreme Court. Goldstein Howe's…
February 14, 2004
My thanks to Ed Darrell for pointing me to an article by Peter Gomes in the Boston Globe. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard. Of the recent court cases involving gay marriage, he writes:
We have seen this before. When the courts…
February 13, 2004
Robert Bork has joined the faculty of the law school at the University of Richmond. According to the press release announcing his appointment,
"Judge Bork is one of the most prominent and controversial American legal intellectuals of modern times," Smolla said in announcing the appointment. "He is…
February 13, 2004
This story just keeps getting worse. In New Delhi on Friday, French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin said that the French government would consider exempting Sikhs from the new law banning religious clothing and symbols:
After meeting a delegation led by chairman of the National Minorities…
February 13, 2004
Alan Leshner, the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has written an article concerning the recent controversy in Georgia over evolution in science classes. What he writes seems to support my contention that all of the public handwringing over the superficial issue of…
February 13, 2004
In the midst of yesterday's Darwin Day celebrations around the world, you might have missed this little tidbit. Some folks in Australia have begun giving away the Wilberforce Award, named of course for the Bishop Wilberforce who debated the validity of evolution against T.H. Huxley at Oxford in…
February 13, 2004
Russell Husted also left a couple of comments in response to my fisking of Mitt Romney's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about gay marriage. Russell wrote:
Ed, you say "he's right on the general point that marriage predates our constitution and our nation, but he is wrong to imply that there has…
February 13, 2004
Russell Husted, a fellow blogger not to be confused with Rusty, left a couple of comments in response to postings far down on my page, so I thought I'd move them up toward the top and answer them before they scroll off entirely. I hadn't noticed them until now. One was in response to my post…
February 12, 2004
Just another note on the whole French ban on religious clothing or symbols. For all of France's screaming about following international norms and international law in the debate over war in Iraq, have they given no thought to the Universal Declartion on Human Rights, which they signed in 1948?…
February 12, 2004
Charles Darwin was born Feb. 12, 1809. With the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin took his place alongside the likes of Copernicus, Newton, Kepler and (later) Einstein as the greatest of the great scientific thinkers. His place in that pantheon is secured by the fact that, 150…
February 11, 2004
The religion news blog is reporting the story of Marilyn Cole, a Virginia woman who keeps getting arrested for trespassing at a car lot:
The case against Marilyn Cole, 40, of 4420 Scarborough Square, appeared to baffle Prince William County General District Court Judge Wenda K. Travers for a time…
February 11, 2004
The Brigade of Bellicose Women at On The Third Hand are hosting this week's Carnival of the Vanities. Check it out and follow the links. You'll get to see interesting writing from other bloggers. It will either inform you or inflame you, and either one can be a good thing. And go back to read On…
February 11, 2004
The warning I gave in my post yesterday is echoed on CNN today. Is there really any doubt that banning the wearing of headscarves is only going to further radicalize the Muslim community in France? Not to French Muslim leaders:
"The majority of Muslims want to practice their religion in peace and…
February 10, 2004
I've been reading excerpts from Paul Waldman's new book Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You. There are a few brilliant paragraphs scattered about, but like most partisan polemicists, Waldman seems to think that what he describes is unique to his enemies, in…
February 10, 2004
The lower house of France's parliament has voted to outlaw "signs and dress that conspicuously show the religious affiliation" of students in French public schools. The AP reports:
The measure, which would outlaw conspicuous religious clothing and symbols in classrooms, was approved 494-36. It goes…
February 10, 2004
Yesterday's story of the American Airlines pilot cajoling his passengers to use the time in the air to proselytize just gets funnier and funnier. First, in the interests of fairness, it should be said that other passengers on the flight, and the pilot himself, have said that he did not call non-…